Nvu 1.0 has been released!
Version 1.0 of Nvu has been released, so take some time to update your copy. As I mentioned previously in this blog, I think Nvu is a great Web authoring tool and kudos are due to the development team for putting out such a great tool.
AdSense Tip #7: When NOT to use CSS
Cascading style sheets (CSS) are a great way to control how Web pages look. They make it easy to separate the presentation from the structure of the content. However, some people go overboard and use CSS in ways it shouldn't. When this happens, AdSense publishers often find that the ads being displayed on their sites are mistargeted. What's happening?
As I explain in Make Easy Money with Google, HTML is a markup language. Its primary purpose is to describe the structure of a Web page. Tags let you specify which parts are headings, which are paragraphs, what the title is, and so on. HTML tags also let you format text using tags like <i> and <b> to indicate italic and bold text, for example. However, much of the formatting was done poorly and it polluted the content — there were <font> tags all over the place and all kinds of tricks were done with <table> tags to get things to position where the Web page designers wanted them.
The emergence of CSS removed the need for many HTML formatting tricks, which is great. HTML returned to describing the structure of a document. However, there are a few tags that you should not remove. For example, don't remove the header tags (<h1> and so on). Don't remove <b> or <i> tags. The tags are used by AdSense and search engines to figure out which keywords are prominent and important in your content. If you take them out, you're making it harder for them to figure out what your content is all about. Leave them in, but take out the other formatting tricks.
Understanding the AdWords-AdSense relationship
Readers wanting a clearer — well, maybe not clearer, but certainly comprehensive — look at how AdSense and AdWords are related should look at the Google AdWords-AdSense Block Diagram, part of the Vaughns 1-Pagers site. Very interesting analysis, definitely worth looking at. Although I describe what AdWords is in Make Easy Money with Google and how it's really the flipside of AdSense, I don't spend a lot of time on it other than using it to find high-paying keywords like “vioxx lawsuit” or “mesothelioma” and their ilk. Vaughns' diagram of the AdWords-AdSense relationship is an interesting study.
Note, however, that Google often changes how AdWords and/or AdSense work at various times, so these kinds of explanations can be incorrect about some of the details. At the high level, though, it seems pretty accurate to me. Check it out!